Monday morning

This is so true, this is so true --- contemporary universities

We've been fans of Ross Douthat for quite a while, and here, from his latest column in the NYT, one quote (he's talking about contemporary universities):

"[Even without Trump,] the humanities would still be in existential crisis and possibly terminal decline. A hedge fund with a library attached model of administration would still prevail. An incoherent mix of ambitious scientism and post-Protestant moralism and simple greed would still be the ruling spirit."

Supreme little rocket man --- commemorating the US-NorthKorean meeting (update)

Here's a picture of the coin the Trump administration released prematurely in "commemoration" of the historical Trump-Un meeting:

Trump canceled said meeting today. Haha.

Two issues: 

(1) Trump joined the Axis of Evil here, by adopting the tyrant's own terminology ("supreme leader");
(2) Trump was right in cancelling the meeting, because Un had the president ensnared in a nice rope of Machiavellian diplomacy; in the end, Trump needed the meeting more than Kim Jong-Un. 


We do agree on the fact that Trump's acting outside the box made sense (as a large chunk of political Game Theory has been telling---"proving" by any standard---since more than 50 years). Lots of "games" lock you into a losing position for as long as your adversary can assume that you are a bienpensant-negotiator. But if your adversary has to fear that you don't care much about a few million Korean citizens killed in a war that's ultimately won by your side because you have "the bigger nuclear button on [your] desk," the equation changes, and you may prevail in negotiations that are otherwise lost. The whole North-Korean nuclear armament issue since 1994 is possibly the best example. Trump is not a complete idiot because he understood this. (We would still say Trump is a complete fool, relying on semantic differences between the terms "fool," and "idiot"). 

And now this Trump-fool, having been promised a meeting with the "supreme leader" (as his own "commemorative medal" of the meeting issued a few days ago calls the Kim Jong-un tyrant), and having been put onto the fawning shield of a Nobel Peace Price by South-Korean president Moon, and then having evoked his Nobel-eligibility on TV, this fool has then his vice-president Pence give a talk in which the latter compares the deal with Kim to the deal with Arab dictator Qaddafi, who gave up on his nuclear prep-work in exchange for nothing and was then swept away by the Arab insurgency of 2011 while the West stood idly by.

Plus, during all of this, Trump cancelled the US deal with Iran, thus putting his country in a position where it may face two major wars of choice at once (from where is Trump to launch his attack against Iran? From Quatar, where he alienated the ruler XXX, and where the US has two military bases, a fact of which the supreme leader (Trump, in this case) was apparently not aware when he did his anti-Quatar twittering? Any other US bases nearby? No.).

So, North-Korea didn't show up during a preparatory meeting three days ago and then didn't even answer the phone. (This is like dealing with local craftsmen on our beloved Cote d'Azur.)

At that point, Trump had maneuvered himself into a position where he needed the meeting more than Kim. Snapping defeat from the jaws of victory---as Trump's erstwhile chum Steve Bannon characterized the Trump trade negotiations with China a few days ago. The art of the deal.

Brexit means Brexit

Did you know...

White House update

We all know Goodreads has had it's share of drama

 (Fragment of a page recently found on Goodreads:)

Mona > Goodreads Status Update

Mona added a status update

We all know Goodreads has had it’s share of drama. We’re battle-scarred & throw up our hands saying “we just want to read books”. 

So, I, too, got the message from the troll "Tammy". But, unlike some, I believe what she posted is true. And IF any of it’s true, it isn’t just drama. It is HUGELY problematic, potentially illegal, and has the power to really hurt people. 

Please, just think through a few of these things:

— Mar 11, 2018 01:57AM

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message 1: by Mona (last edited Mar 11, 2018 02:03AM) (new)

Mar 11, 2018 01:58AM

Recently the author MA posted on his blog an entry showing pictures of himself. He said it was because anon trolls were trying to dox him and out his personal information - something he’s long said he’s tried to keep private, though much of which he himself has shared online. *shrug*

In this post he himself admitted to sending fake pictures in the past to people in his readership and friend circles. He admitted to this lie. It hurt a lot of people, people who trusted him. That sucks. But maybe, for some of you, that doesn’t sound like such a big deal…fake pictures? Meh. But it’s the lie that sets this stage. 

Explains everything

Find a caption

"And brother, can she write" --- book review of "Need to know" by Karen Cleveland

We get an email from John Grisham, the author, who talks about the "heady days" of his breakthrough novel, "The Firm," and about Karen Cleveland's firstling, the spy novel "Need to Know", which is apparently poised to mirror his own success.

Since we're wondering increasingly what makes a successful book of fiction, we push the Amazon button and download Cleveland's ebook.

The best thing about the book is the motto, taken from Oscar Wilde:

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

Not the best thing about the book is its implicit promise of authenticity. The author is herself a counter-intelligence (CI) expert with the CIA, and so one would expect her tome to convey something of an insider's view of modern spying. Well, to the extent that it does, Cleveland's profession has gone the way of most other occupations: workers and co-workers are couched in cubicles where they stare at computer screens when they don't spy on each other or drive home to collect offspring from overpriced private schools that charge five dollars per child per minute of pickup delay. And after a sexless night (Goodreads reviewers have congratulated themselves on the fact that there is no sex in the book) she kisses her husband ("Matt") goodbye and is back to Langley where she---in this age of algorithms---has been developing her own ALGORITHM, a program that's supposed to filter Russian spies from the rest of the population. Even better, her task is accomplished and today's the day to put her invention to work. She hits a few keyboard buttons and there he appears on the screen, her first Russian spy, and it is---spoiler alert---her husband, Matt.

Meanwhile...

(not photoshopped:)

The color of racism

Net Neutrality --- The Machiavelli Chronicles Part MMXVII --- Our excursion to St. Raphael

We went to St. Raphael with our Korean friends, and your reporter was just thinking...

...the revocation of NET NEUTRALITY (providers allowed to prioritize certain sites to the disadvantage of other sites), as voted by some FCC panel along party lines...

...we should nail this to the door of the White House like Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral...

Spread the news

A prayer for your thoughts

Our friend Glenn sends this cri de coeur:

Not exactly a cri de coeur, but you get the gist.

Anything the GREEN EYES have to add to this? We have a billionaire, Neill Palmer, sure, and he dies a suspicious darkroom death in Part II. But we have nothing really funny. Well, okay, here, from Part I, John meeting Palmer at Godehart's party/orgy (the thing about the web site is true, actually, and the guy's name really was Neill, but he wasn't wealthy). Here goes:

The network next to me consists of two elderly men, and two youngish rent boys. Love is in the air. The men are much older than me. I recognize one of them from the distant past, when I was still a young regular at the Blue Moon. He was running a place off the Coastal Highway, on Route 24, a large Thai place with an upper, more secluded, floor above the main restaurant, awful food, and willful oriental boys, who were waiting on tables in the meantime. Patrons came from all over the place, even from Atlanta, to taste one or more of his waiters. Yes, now I remember his name, Neill Palmer. He kept a website back in those days that was quite revolutionary, poorly aligned text in colorful, meandering hues and pictures of his staff, ranked according to their state of sexual arousal, the apex being the climax, boys caught with their cum coming in flagrante. I remember that he had never managed to externalize the moment of the squirt (white ropes flying from the penis), his cum-shots were always a bit off, the cum caught already dispersed into milky drops in the empty, or not so empty, space in front of his oriental masturbators.

Kapitalismus Kritik (1) --- 1843

Karl Marx disliked it, "sheer critique of capitalism," although he hated "moralizing" even more. But there you have it. 1843---yet another attempt of THE ECONOMIST to launch yet another magazine and dump it onto unsuspecting Economist subscribers until it flounders---has this add in its latest issue:

You shouldn't worry that most ads in this unsalable magazine are about jet charter (or Hublot watches), but: 

(1) The suit of this this guy who has supposedly chartered this aeroplane and is now striding towards it as if it were an expensive prostitute---isn't he sagging a bit too much for his cut-to-fashion outfit? This is really bespoke (tailor-made), his 'suit'?
(2) And now what; he's walking all the way? Where's the chauffeured limousine that would take him to the gangway? 
(3) And if there's no limousine because he had a bad day in the market, why is he approaching his airborne convenience as if he's trying to commit suicide by cutting his head off the sharp side of the plane's left wing? 

You say.

"Your name is Obamacare, isn't it?"